On the front page of a Ugandan newspaper, the country's 100 "top" homosexuals were listed, along with a bright yellow banner that reads, "Hang Them." It also includes a photo and their addresses.

Four men have been attacked since the paper was published and many others are now in hiding. But this is not new for the conservative African country! A lawmaker introduced a bill last year that would have imposed the death penalty or life in prison for homosexual acts.

Gays in Uganda have suffered harassment and attacks since the bill was introduced. It follows a visit by leaders of U.S. conservative Christian ministries that promote therapy to turn gay people straight.

Ugandan citizen Patrick Ndede said:

"Before the introduction of the bill in parliament most people did not mind about our activities. But since then, we are harassed by many people who hate homosexuality. The publicity the bill got made many people come to know about us and they started mistreating us."

There's a guy named Jeff Sharlet that has investigated the US ties extensively and written a book about it. Here's an excerpt of a recent article he wrote in Harpers -

Quote:

The Fellowship is the Ugandan Parliament’s branch of an American evangelical movement of the same name, also called the Family. The Family differs from most fundamentalist groups in its preference for those whom it calls “key men,” political and business elites, over the multitude. The bill’s author, MP Bahati, the de facto leader of the Ugandan branch, has become a national star for his crusade against gays. Winston Churchill called Uganda “the pearl of Africa”; the Family agrees. In the past ten years, it has poured millions into “leadership development” there, more than it has invested in any other foreign country, and billions in U.S. foreign aid have flowed into Ugandan coffers since a Family leader turned on the tap twenty-four years ago for President Yoweri Museveni, a dictator hailed by the West for his democratic rhetoric and by Christian conservatives for the evangelical zeal of his regime.

Every year, right before Uganda’s Independence Day, the government holds a National Prayer Breakfast modeled on the Family’s event in Washington. Americans, among them Republican Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, former attorney general John Ashcroft—both longtime Family men and outspoken antigay activists—and Pastor Rick Warren, are a frequent attraction at the Ugandan Fellowship’s weekly meetings. “He said homosexuality is a sin and that we should fight it,” Bahati recalled of Warren’s visits.

Inhofe and Warren, like most American fundamentalists, came out in muted opposition to Uganda’s gay death penalty, but they didn’t dispute the motive behind it: the eradication of homosexuality. They may disagree on the means, favoring a “cure” rather than killing, but not the ends. For years, American fundamentalists have looked on Uganda as a laboratory for theo- cracy, though most prefer such terms as “government led by God.” They sent not just money and missionaries but ideas, and if the money disappeared and the missionaries came and went, the ideas took hold. Ugandan evangelicals sing American songs and listen to sermons about American problems, often from American preachers. Ugandan politicians attend prayer breakfasts in America and cut deals with evangelical American businessmen. American evangelicals, in turn, hold up Ugandan congregations as role models for their own, and point to Ugandan AIDS policy—from which American evangelicals nearly stripped condom distribution altogether—as proof that public-health problems can be solved by moral remedies. It is a classic fundamentalist maneuver: move a fight you can’t win in the center to the margins, then broadcast the results back home.

There's a guy named Jeff Sharlet that has investigated the US ties extensively and written a book about it. Here's an excerpt of a recent article he wrote in Harpers -

An example of what makes me not want to know anything about world news. Its too fucked up. This are not some stupid rednecks, these are smart, wealthy, educated people. Reminds me of the Nazis. Its pure evil.